Age discrimination in India: H1B visa charges and age discrimination claims against Infosys

BANGALORE, INDIA: In order to hire more Indian staff in the U.S. for India's top outsourcing companies, allegations have come up stating the visa misuse and age discrimination for the recruitment which has become a negative backlash which has to be dealt with.

Recently Infosys, one of the leading software companies in India was found with two individual lawsuits alleging the misuse of H1B visa and age discrimination for local hiring. Of late, Individual lawsuits have been faced particularly by Infosys, and the rigid rules for visa regulations.

The visa rejection of Indian techies has risen from 4 percent to 8 percent over a period of nine months which in turn has hit the business of software industry by $60 billion.

Indian tech firms are still amateurs for such issues and need to learn from companies like Toyota and their ways of dealing it.Till recently most of the companies like the Infosys, Wipro, and Tata Consultancy Services had to face with new legislations and proposals which in turn led to the increase of the fee for work permits in other countries and made it even more complicated for the Indian tech firms to send their staff for delivering projects locally.

The case of age discrimination suit which was filed by 58-year-old Ralph DeVito of New Jersey against Infosys had faced a company rejection for his application which was filed through a job portal monster.com inspite of having an appropriate experience. The complaint stated that Infosys had implied the maximum experience as 25 years, which De Vito already had while applying in August 2009.De Vito in his complaint said that , the requirements for the maximum experience constituted a limitation, specification or age discrimination as to age i.e. a de facto age limit as they were vulnerable to eliminate applicants for the positions at Infosys who were older or more than forty.

Infosys provides part time work visas for individuals in U.S.whereas individuals are asked to work full time in U.S.Jack Palmer, principal consultant with Infosys, in February filed a lawsuit in Alabama court against the tech firm. Palmer had stated in his complaint that the company had asked him to visit the headquarters in Bangalore in order to tackle and overcome the restrictions on H1B visas, and was also asked to write welcome letters to make the Indian employees to come on B1 visas.

Due to such propaganda being made, federal investigators in the U.S. were attracted, who in turn wanted to view Palmers laptop for investigation, according to Computer World. And it also told that Infosys was looking to take the case to an arbitrator. Due to this negative impact, experts like the Philadelphia based immigration lawyer Morley J Nair will evoke a backlash with job age discrimination.